The summary says Langdon has patented a 'new strain' he has been growing for the past 15 years. The strains aren't new in the plant breeding sense, they are existing natural strains of the seaweed grown in isolation, here is the patent. I fail to see what is patentable here; just a description of various naturally occurring strains of dulse and their comparative growth rates. So, if I were to collect the seaweed from the Pacific coast and 'isolate' the same strains, I'd be infringing a patent? What a joke.

You should maybe feel a teensy bit of guilt over the fact that you are using an ad-supported site which derives its revenue from displaying Google ads to its visitors, in lieu of a subscription fee.

Google should maybe feel a teensy bit of guilt over the fact that it is using government infrastructure and services which derive from tax imposed on corporations [and citizens], in lieu of a subscription fee.

I remember when I was a kid we had two basset hounds, mother and son. The son wasn't too bright. They would both get a bone, the mother would eat hers quickly and the son would doddle. She would then rush at the gate, barking furiously (at no one). The son would run up and start barking too. The mum would then double back and get his bone.

Fair enough, she wasn't using sonar but it was "competitive interference among individuals of the same species."

OK, I'll bite - so just because other countries abuse people's rights, that makes the abuse of the US courts and government OK? The point is: most other countries abusing such rights don't hypocritically pretend to be "the land of the free." Except the UK, of course. Once this may have been true for the US but that time has long gone.

Not always. We once lived in an inner-city neighbourhood with a high cockroach population. Didn't matter how clean we were (and we were clean, plugged holes in walls, made sure there was no water, etc) they still came in just from population pressure. Not much you can do if they crawl up through the drains.

This happens all the time. Not so much selling the info to competitors but sales people taking their client's info when they leave the company, often to go work for a competitor. There is also people losing their phones along with corporate data. Best that data never leave the premises.

I was being facetious - every government wants to control whatever they can. While I would rather no one controls the Internet, and having Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran guiding matters would be disastrous, it is probably only a matter of time when the game will be over, the Internet becomes just another tool of governments and corporations, and we'll all have to go home. I do despair....

They have some really good ideas for rack/server design - eg they reckon they are getting 34% power saving by supplying 12V DC to buses in the racks so servers don't need individual power supplies and with improved cooling paths.

Manufacturers won't standardise unless they are pushed like rackspace is doing. This is a big advance.